Despite declining for four straight years, Japan held on to its status as a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates last year, an annual government survey showed.

The number of people who took their own life in Japan in 2013 stood at 27,283, down from 27,858 people a year earlier, according to the latest White Paper on Suicide Prevention in Japan released on Tuesday. The total number dropped below the 30,000 mark for the first time in 15 years in 2012. Read More »

Two years after the “It Gets Better Project” was launched in the U.S., Japan is following with its own attempt to ease pressures on LGBT youth.

“We will begin our move on Sept. 10, which is the day of World Health Organization’s World Suicide Prevention Day, and will aim to save as many sexual minority youth as possible by delivering our message that it’s OK,” said Fumino Sugiyama, a co-founder of the project.

The campaign comes amid growing attention to gay culture — and the surrounding pressures — in Japan. Last week, the Japanese government mentioned for the first time in its annual national policy to prevent suicide the need to offer special support for the gay community. Read More »

The story of the 13-year-old boy from Otsu, Shiga prefecture, who committed suicide last October after being bullied by his classmates, has ignited fierce public outcry.

The boy, who jumped off the 14th floor of a building, was reported to have been forced to “practice suicide” routinely, besides suffering daily physical abuse. Reports claim he was also forced to eat dead bees, while his room in his home was apparently vandalized by his bullies shortly before he decided to leap to his death. Read More »

The number of Japanese adults thinking of taking their own lives due to economic, social and emotional distress is on the rise, according to a new study by the Cabinet Office.

Of those surveyed, about one in four — 23.4% — aged between 20 and 50 had contemplated suicide at some point. That was up by four percentage points from a previous survey in 2008. Of those who had contemplated suicide in the latest survey, 22.7% had thought about it in the last year, up almost two percentage points from 2008. Read More »

1. It’s taken 23 years for acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s novel “Norwegian Wood” to move from the black and white page to the silver screen. And it hadn’t been for award-winning movie director Tran Anh Hung, there’s every chance it wouldn’t have happened at all, the author having steadfastly spurned approaches over the years. Five years on from the first contact between the two artists, the seminal story of love, death and the loss of innocence got the full red carpet premiere treatment, screening in competition at the Venice Film festival.

2. In the starkest piece of arithmetic of this and many other weeks, Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research calculated that Japan’s staggeringly high suicide rate not only takes a huge psychological toll, it also cost the country’s economy $32 billion last year. Perhaps the shock of the number’s scale may prompt more serious reflection in the country on addressing the problem at large: certainly, leading lights of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan have at least been talking about it. Read More »

DPJ lawmaker Ichiro Ozawa is concerned about the “psychological collapse of Japanese society.”

It’s a staggeringly high number, but then again, Japan’s suicide rate is also staggeringly high: 24.4 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the latest official data from the World Health Organization, a co-sponsor of this Friday’s suicide prevention day. The WHO’s latest published figure for the U.S. is 11.0 per 100,000.

In what might appear a cold calculation of a price tag, rather than the psychological toll on the country and its people, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research arrived at its number by including a figure of 1.9 trillion yen in earnings lost to the economy by the 26,500 people who took their own lives in Japan in 2009, according to the data released Tuesday. Read More »

About Japan Real Time

Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com